Theater

Mozart in the Trenches

September 8, 2006
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Mozart in the Trenches

In our ongoing Everything Happens in the Omniculture department, British filmmaker Kenneth Branagh has made a movie version of the Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart opera The Magic Flute, set in the trenches of World War I. The picture premiered yesterday at the Teatro La Fenice opera house in Venice. Reuters reports: The $27 million production opens with Tamino as a soldier in the trenches and, instead of the snake that almost kills him in the original libretto he is pursued by a trail of mustard gas. Papageno, the bird catcher, becomes the keeper of canaries used during the war to test for gas and the Queen of the Night’s triumphant first appearance is astride a tank. "I was surprised when I first started listening to it (the opera) of the scale of it, the intensity of it, the drama of it," Branagh told reporters after a press screening of "The Magic Flute" at the Venice Film Festival. "It seemed that in the music there was a kind of plea for peace and it evolved into a sense that perhaps this utterly fascinating and appalling situation of the First World War … was something where the music could meet and the one

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Obliterating Cultural Distinctions: Shakespeare at the Fringe

August 21, 2006
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Obliterating Cultural Distinctions: Shakespeare at the Fringe

Shakespeare in a bouncy castle, or moon walk, is the Reuters writer’s pick for zaniest Shakespeare adapatation at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival (see full article here). Every year brings several new adaptations of Shakespeare plays at the Fringe, another of those "outsider" phenomena, like the Lollapalooza festival, that become part of the mainstream culture and redifine it, as is the way of things in the Omniculture. Even midsize, stalwartly middle-American towns such as Indianapolis have fringe festivals now. This year’s Edinburgh Fringe includes a "roller-disco" version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, along with other equally bizarre ideas from a crop which the Reuters story describes as "an endless variety that could be collectively labeled ’101 Ways to Murder The Bard’ ": "Macbeth — That Old Black Magic" boasts a Frank Sinatra soundtrack and you can see "The Tempest" with acrobats, puppets and circus tricks. In "Corleone: The Godfather," the American High School Theater Festival troupe asks "What if Shakespeare had written the Godfather?"   We can surely hope that such tomfoolery will create an interest in Shakespeare among some individuals who would never otherwise get anywhere near the Bard’s works. For the more sophisticated, it could be argued that

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Depp, Burton to Make “Sweeney Todd” Film

August 17, 2006
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Depp, Burton to Make “Sweeney Todd” Film

Actor Johnny Depp and writer-director Tim Burton will combine their eccentric talents on a film version of the Steven Sondheim musical Sweeney Todd scheduled to reach theaters next year. According to the Reuters report:  In "Sweeney Todd," to be released in late 2007, Depp will play the murderous barber of the same name who seeks his own brand of razor-slashing revenge against a judge who wrongfully imprisoned him. . . . The legend of serial-killer Sweeney Todd is rooted in British lore, and has given rise to numerous earlier plays and films, including a 1936 film called "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," and a 1998 TV movie, "The Tale of Sweeney Todd," starring Sir Ben Kingsley. The new movie, which will be co-produced by DreamWorks and Warner Bros., will be adapted from the modern musical thriller "Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," with songs originally composed by Sondheim. That version became a Broadway hit in 1979 and won 8 Tony awards. Depp and Burton have worked together on several films that have been very successful with audiences and have received critical acclaim as well. Sleepy Hollow, Edward Scissorhands, and The Corpse Bride stand out as

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NYC Fringe Festival

August 11, 2006
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The New York International Fringe Festival opens today in the city that never sleeps, kicking off 16 days of theater in 20 venues. It’s an offshoot of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which I wrote about recently in these pages. As I’ve noted earlier on this site (here and here), an interesting and essential aspect of the Omniculture is that "the counterculture continuously becomes the culture. If you want to know what is going to surround you tomorrow in American culture, look at what is on the fringes today." Confirming this tendency of the counterculture to become the culture, the New York Daily News reports that "the Fringe Festival didn’t start out as a breeding ground for the Great White Way. The Present Company, a nonprofit Off-Off-Broadway organization, began hosting festivals in Scotland in 1966 in order to showcase unspoken talent." But the fringe has become increasingly absorbed into the mainstream: Since then, the Fringe has exploded into a world-famous phenomenon, much to its founders’ surprise. "To last 10 years as a cultural institution in this city is very impressive," says Lasko. An important element of that absorption has been the effect on the Festival’s content. With big theatrical producers, critics,

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Fringe Phenomena in the Omniculture

August 6, 2006
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Fringe Phenomena in the Omniculture

Another hugely successful "fringe" phenomenon (see my Lollapalooza post immediately below) is the Edinburgh Fringe, which Reuters characterizes as "the world’s largest and most irreverent arts festival." According to the Reuters story, this "fringe" phenomenon  is a big business and highly influential on the culture. The festival’s director "said the Fringe has sold about 20 million tickets over the past six decades ‘and we hope this year to top the million mark again which we have done for the last three years.’ "     A common theme in this year’s program reflects some current concerns, but with a typically quirky approach. As the Reuters story reports, the Edinburgh Fringe  . . . celebrated its 60th birthday on Sunday with religion the big theme being tackled this year by playwrights and comedians. Fringe performers revel in controversy and 2006 should be no exception with "We Don’t Know Shi’ite" about British ignorance of Islam and "Jesus: The Guantanamo Years." "It is the most amazing barometer of world politics," said The Scotsman newspaper’s theater critic Joyce McMillan, reflecting on the Fringe which last year tackled the subject of terrorism head on after the London suicide bombings. Fringe director Paul Gudgin, overseeing 17,000

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